Insurance
by twopoint
Summary: Crawford secures an article of trade. Prelude to Vorovskoy Zakon and a longer story with plot! that will soon follow. Features, again, a literate telepath.


Crawford found Schuldig in the Rosenkreuz library at three o'clock in the morning. He climbed the stairs to the top floor of the cavernous building knowing exactly where Schuldig was hidden, unknowingly waiting to be introduced to the well-worn plot that Crawford had sampled, observed and refined for weeks. The library was a seldom used chaotic building separated from the main structures. Crawford had been so involved with the conclusion of his outline that he'd forgotten his umbrella and felt the moisture in his hair and on his skin from the dense and misty fog that hovered over the school in an early spring miasma.

Friend was an accusatory word. It was a word filled with the taste of bitter chocolate – a savory temptation on the surface but immensely unsatisfactory when tasted: good in theory. They used the term ironically between them, tried it out on their tongues like a pleasing foreign phrase. Friendship would never be won by threat of death. Or maybe it was. Crawford squelched a vision. He was getting better at suppression and soon his gift would be ready for the greater world. He caught a prophetic sliver of Schuldig's bloody, bare foot.

"It took me forever to find you," Crawford said. He pulled a hard wooden chair from several arranged beneath a nearby table and sat down with his arms crossed over the chair's back. Schuldig sat on the floor surrounded by reference texts, magazines, assorted pages ripped from their bindings, and his hardly touched, long-cold dinner.

"I was feeling quite" – Schuldig glanced around as if he'd find the appropriate phrase in an unopened book on the crowded, disordered shelves – "removed, or the need to be removed. So I removed myself to here. What do you want?"

"I wanted to ask you something," Crawford said as he watched a stream of possibilities flicker through Schuldig's expression. There was more than one way to read a mind; Crawford read Schuldig's pulse.

Schuldig frowned and closed the book spread out between his long legs. "Ask me what?"

"I'm leaving tomorrow," Crawford said, waiting for a reaction.

The only visible response was a slight tightening of Schuldig's already thin lips. "That's not a question."

"You're bright for a telepath."

"Your shields are loud and gaudy like neon. They hurt to look at." Schuldig seemed as if he might stand but instead he paused and stretched, settling in for a fight.

Crawford's gaze dropped to the shadow of a sharp hip revealed as Schuldig stretched his arms up. "You're the loud one," he said absently.

"Not tonight."

"No," Crawford said. "Not tonight."

True enough. In the few months of their heightened – acquaintanceship – Crawford had learned that a subdued, introspective Schuldig was like a tremor before the ground cracked. Crawford wanted to own that energy. Schuldig's expression was guarded, a pale, sharp mask hiding something that could be as simple as a bad day or a complex design of revenge aimed toward an assumed injustice. Schuldig chose his targets like a fickle lover. Some days he sought out instructors who were too weak to see him coming, other days he tracked older students who tortured new arrivals. Schuldig's moral code ranged from puritanical to sociopathic, depending on what tradition he chose to channel.

"Are you going to stare at me until you leave?" Schuldig asked.

"I could," Crawford said and smiled.

Schuldig's mouth snapped shut.

"I don't want to leave with unfinished business between us. We'll be seeing each other again soon enough and I won't have you drawing conclusions in the time you're left alone with your thoughts, or I should say, everyone's thoughts." Crawford stood and placed the chair neatly back beneath the table. He walked carefully through the literary debris, kicked Schuldig's dinner aside and leaned down beside him, close enough to touch, but not quite.

Schuldig was a rigid, waiting study in suspicion; he watched Crawford from the corner of his eye. His left hand toyed with the edge of the book and his right, splayed near his knee, flexed as if he might grip knowledge from the floor. Crawford shifted, moved the book aside, and knelt between Schuldig's legs.

They stared at each other in a parody of their first meeting.

"Are you going to show me my death again?" Schuldig asked defiantly but he spoke quietly and his gaze darted back and forth as if one of Crawford's eyes would tell the complete truth, or at least offer a hint behind his glasses.

"Not tonight," Crawford said, as he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Schuldig's. Nothing more than a brief press of their lips, but a current ran between them, a certain calibration. He drew back to speak, but not too far. Crawford had a sudden fleeting image of thoughts being carried by breath. He felt the warmth of Schuldig's mouth as he said, "Maybe tomorrow before I leave, or in six months when I see you again. Or maybe you'll see it yourself if you look closely enough."

Schuldig's eyes were like cracked ice, half-visible as they fluttered open again, lashes red as his hair.

"What are you doing?" Schuldig leaned forward even as he asked.

Crawford answered by demonstration. Rosenkreuz was not the sort of place where one gathered moments and kept them, but Crawford was determined that Schuldig would keep this particular meeting in some hidden compartment of his disorderly brain. Crawford sought to buy Schuldig's loyalty through touch and breath, so he was very careful and thorough and ready to shift to whatever lead Schuldig wanted.

It worked. For the briefest moment, Schuldig was very still; he pushed against Crawford's thoughts, fiddled with the lock, failed, and considered walking away, but anything was better than being lost in the thick fog covering the school. Schuldig knew risk but he had never taken a calculated risk. He laughed briefly, bitterly, and relaxed back with a sigh to better offer himself up.

"I'll regret this," he said, but his eyes said, _come,_ and Crawford followed.

Their mouths the only point of contact, Crawford tried to hurry the kiss but Schuldig wouldn't let him, palm pressed to an open book until the slick page ripped loose from the binding. Crawford's arms trembled from holding himself just far enough away from Schuldig's body that they did not fully meet.

With a small, impatient sound, Schuldig drew his legs up, shifted, and wrapped around Crawford – success assured with the long awaited vision, Schuldig in his lap. There hadn't been time until that night to learn the many variations of a kiss with anyone. They were expected to learn other things and keep their hands mostly to themselves, unless the touch would better their talents. Schuldig shaped the kiss with his hands to either side of Crawford's face, his fingers learning the texture of Crawford's hair. By the time his thumb pressed a trail down the back of Crawford's neck, their mouths had mastered a rhythm of angles, licks and wet heat. It was better than knowing thoughts, better than knowing what came next, better for being awkwardly inexperienced.

They continued to kiss as Schuldig reached down and removed Crawford's shoes, one at a time, and the feeling of his warm hand against the fine bones of Crawford's bare foot was better than what their mouths were doing, made better by the simultaneous touch: mouth, foot, Schuldig's hand against his heel. All untried territory.

Crawford had wanted Schuldig since the afternoon in Unger's office. He wanted Schuldig's loyalty, and was prepared to purchase it by any means necessary. Crawford studied Schuldig's personalities, those that were assumed and those that came naturally to the telepath. The hardest feat was telling the difference. Once he differentiated the collected from the organic it was only a matter of time before he discerned Schuldig's inexplicable vulnerabilities. He would win him through touch and warmth, words were useless. Crawford was prepared to do what it took to secure the path he wanted, he just hadn't figured on liking it so much. He'd never been attracted to a man before, but Schuldig wasn't limited by gender, nor could he be defined by it.

The mouth that kissed Crawford back was a woman's: soft, pliant and full of mysteries. The hand that worked his belt loose was a masculine and greedy. A chameleon to the greater goal, or carried away by Schuldig's multiplicity, Crawford lost his own sense of proper role. He couldn't remember his original intention.

"Will you fuck me in the library?" Schuldig asked, bringing Crawford quickly to the present.

"If you want me to," Crawford said hoarsely, shocked by his immediate arousal. His speech was slurred through their kiss.

Schuldig's legs wrapped tighter around Crawford's hips. He rocked forward in emphasis, "What do you see us doing?" Schuldig asked.

The possibilities seemed endless but for once the future didn't seem as important as the present. Crawford gripped Schuldig's hip and pulled him closer – "Whatever you want."


End file.
